** 2013 Geography Before/After **

Monsieur Folie

Bonbon1995 wrote: »

Peoples opinions on HL geography??

The general consensus seems to be that it was very fair, but tricky in places due to wording of questions and stuff.

Bonbon1995

Is anyone else traumatised?? Everyone from my school was.. short q's were way different than in different years.. no weather charts or anything! The regional was horrible and the biome really highlighted how they are trying to eliminate people leaving stuff out.. by right it should have been 2 biome this year but it was 2 soils.. also them narrowing you down to discussing soils temp and vegetation instead of animals because we all know animals are easier than soils.. very sickened! hopefully we have a nice marker and the project brings us up..

Jordan537

yes, the exam was very "all over the place" with no real structure. A horrible exam in my opinion.

joebloggs32

dave2610 wrote: »

My teacher says that quarrying and mining can be interchanged. It didn't specifically say quarrying for any other option so you could use it for the mining option.

Correct. Quarrying is a form of mining, opencast mining is widely practiced all over the world.

200c200c

Well I loved the HL exam I was slightly prepared and everything I learned came up Did Q.s 2, 5, 12 and 17 Couldnt have been happier like i bull****ted a bit but got everything done ! I found the short questions great And OL maths was a joy too Well worth the cramming last night and a much better geog paper than 2012 ! Resembled 2011 i think Ahhhh Táim ar muin na muice

dizzymenace

Bonbon1995 wrote: »

Is anyone else traumatised?? Everyone from my school was.. short q's were way different than in different years.. no weather charts or anything! The regional was horrible and the biome really highlighted how they are trying to eliminate people leaving stuff out.. by right it should have been 2 biome this year but it was 2 soils.. also them narrowing you down to discussing soils temp and vegetation instead of animals because we all know animals are easier than soils.. very sickened! hopefully we have a nice marker and the project brings us up..

i couldnt agree more , they definetely attempted to include a lot of the stuff people eliminate when studying . the folding and faulting threw me , i didnt read that chapter AT ALL . none of my class did . i thought it was a joke that only 1 biome came up , nevertheless i i got through it . nowhere was their efforts to provoke critical thinking more evident than in the continental/subcontinental agriculture question , not allowing you to speak about weather , though i managed to bring it in as relief(ghats) cause rainfall (monsoon) in india

Bonbon1995

dizzymenace wrote: »

i couldnt agree more , they definetely attempted to include a lot of the stuff people eliminate when studying . the folding and faulting threw me , i didnt read that chapter AT ALL . none of my class did . i thought it was a joke that only 1 biome came up , nevertheless i i got through it . nowhere was their efforts to provoke critical thinking more evident than in the continental/subcontinental agriculture question , not allowing you to speak about weather , though i managed to bring it in as relief(ghats) cause rainfall (monsoon) in india

So sickening.. well that's the A gone the timing too is baaad.. especially if their trying to rattle your cage and make you think outside the box.. doesn't help we have the most time efficient examiners in the country id say..

Fiona1993

MarieM2 wrote: »

Im freaking out here I forgot to number my questions in my exam does any one know will it effect me ??
Thanks

Oh God. I spent the whole Summer worrying about this last year, 'did I or did I not number my questions'. Luckily enough I opened my results and got an A1 and upon viewing my paper, it turns out that I didn't number my questions, but my examiner did whilst correcting... It really depends on the examiner. If you didn't number your questions I doubt they wouldn't mark your paper, especially if it's good. Geography students are under huge pressure for time, I wouldn't worry though. Just concentrate on your next exams. Whatever will be, will be and if the worst comes to worst, you can appeal but I doubt you'll need to.

Stoteh

I wrote about quarrying for the extraction of building materials in Q.2 and my teacher said that's fine, but is it? He had so many people coming up to him and seemed in a rush so I'm still nervous in case he didn't hear me correctly. Is it OK to do that? Overall I thought it was OK. I expected it to be very tricky cuz the exam seems to be going that way, and when I read the questions I initially thought "damn" but as I got into them it was OK! But my optional (atmosphere and ocean) was piss easy!

internet_user

Stoteh wrote: »

I wrote about quarrying for the extraction of building materials in Q.2 and my teacher said that's fine, but is it? He had so many people coming up to him and seemed in a rush so I'm still nervous in case he didn't hear me correctly. Is it OK to do that? Overall I thought it was OK. I expected it to be very tricky cuz the exam seems to be going that way, and when I read the questions I initially thought "damn" but as I got into them it was OK! But my optional (atmosphere and ocean) was piss easy!

i wrote about quarrying for that too, i hope its ok

ReemAddict

Lcstudent2013 wrote: »

Was there not a question of the paper for a landform formed by erosion? I thought there was anyways I done a waterfall with diagrams?

So did I? :eek:

hfallada

Dont worry about how well you did. The sec will change the marking scheme dozens of times to ensure they get x amount of As,Bs and Cs.

You will be surprised what some examiners give marks for

Elgubinator

FrankLamar wrote: »

Through quarrying not mining

Tell that to yer man :P

Mr.BA

I'm a geography teacher and overall I thought the exam was much easier than in previous years. I do agree with many who say that the regional geography section was by far the toughest. Really needed to know your stuff.

Also anyone who did the atmospheric and ocean environment option would have been happy in my opinion. Thought it was straight forward.

Felt sorry for those who learned the biome. If ya didn't learn the whole lot then...... ouch.

But my advice to ye guys is to forget about it now and focus on the remainder of the exams.

Well done on finishing the first week of exams

Best of luck with the rest

Mr.BA

Oh and about the marking. If the majority of the country did bad in a section then the marking scheme will change. I've corrected exams before and it happens at least once or twice in most subjects So don't worry

ReemAddict

I thought the paper was terrible in a few ways.

The questions were phrased badly, meaning you had to think about it, which was not an option for me considering we only had two and a half hours and I'm a slow writer.
Some short questions were impossible to make out.
The Physical sections was alright, but I chose Q2 but didn't have a clue about the plate/fault thing, I just guessed using what I learned about Earthquakes (convergent, divergent, tranverse).
The regional I completely waffled my way through and left out a 30 marker.
The Elective I made s**t of because I left it until the very end and just threw down a few points for two of the questions and I drew the bar chart but left out the definition of fossil fuels because I was rushing and only remembered after I handed up the paper.
The Geocology option I think was fair, everybody had an idea of what they were asking, it was just a case of manipulating what you knew into what they were asking.

Tbh, I'm just hoping for a pass. I've always struggled with Geography, my class had to self-teach ourselves at home because our teacher was usless, old and loved to talk about plate tectonics. We didn't touch our textbook for the whole two years, he just stood at the top of the class room and talked.

On the plus side, OL Maths was a good paper, a few tricky ones though, do ye agree?

I'mm just relieved that I'll never have to listen to that fool ever again, hopefully.

ReemAddict

Also, I done the question on erosion and chose a Waterfall. I did a full page (essay style) and drew a diagram but because I was rushing when labeling, I labelled the soft rock and hard rock the opposite way round, would I loose a lot of marks for that? Like would they cross the diagram of and mark as irrelevant?

ReemAddict

Do they have a certain percent that they fail and a certain percent that the give A's too?

Mr.BA

There has to be a certain number of each grade, yes. But if you answered the questions correctly they can't deduct marks. Don't worry. In general the graph/ quota is always met with the certain few who fail.

Don't worry

JOS2013

Mr.BA wrote: »

Oh and about the marking. If the majority of the country did bad in a section then the marking scheme will change. I've corrected exams before and it happens at least once or twice in most subjects So don't worry

if the question was how socio economic factors define a region, and I used Belgium is that ok?

Mr.BA

JOS2013 wrote: »

if the question was how socio economic factors define a region, and I used Belgium is that ok?

If Belgium is an example you have studied and you described how socio-economic factors define the region then you have answered the question in my view. Once you stated how they define a region and related it to Belgium I can't see it being wrong. The more srp's you have the better

Monsieur Folie

ReemAddict wrote: »

Do they have a certain percent that they fail and a certain percent that the give A's too?

Well with so many people sitting the test each year, we usually tend to fall into
a standard distribution all by ourselves. :P

If the graph is noticeably skewed to any particular grade, it'll usually indicate a particularly easy (or particularly difficult) paper or question, and that's when they'll consider adjusting the marking scheme for a more even spread of grades.

If you answer to an A standard though, chances are you'll get an A..

meleanor

BEAUTIFUL paper. Had my A1 in the bag. Until I was half way through a 30marker in the human section answering on the developing world...when I saw it said DEVELOPED. I'm absolutely devastated. I threw down half an answer on urban sprawl and traffic congestion. I want to do medicine and I needed that A!!!

Does anyone know if I can still get an A1 if my fieldwork goes well? Like I'm defo down at least 15 from that Q, could prob have lost marks elsewhere too.
How do people generally score in fieldwork?

Jayo1000

Can anyone help me?
I did the question:
Examine the interaction between economic, political and/or cultural activities in a region you have studied
I answered regarding India. I outlined the interaction of economical activities and cultural activities in the region separate in the answer.
I found the question grammatically difficult to understand exactly what they are looking for.
Any help would be appreciated

JustForClarity

meleanor wrote: »

BEAUTIFUL paper. Had my A1 in the bag. Until I was half way through a 30marker in the human section answering on the developing world...when I saw it said DEVELOPED. I'm absolutely devastated. I threw down half an answer on urban sprawl and traffic congestion. I want to do medicine and I needed that A!!!

Does anyone know if I can still get an A1 if my fieldwork goes well? Like I'm defo down at least 15 from that Q, could prob have lost marks elsewhere too.
How do people generally score in fieldwork?

People generally get 18% or 19% out of the 20% if they do higher level and put effort into their fieldwork. Given that you're quite obviously a very good student then I'd imagine you got basically your full marks for the fieldwork.

One question isn't going to make the difference between grades (remember that an A1 is 90%-100% so there's quite a large room for error if you did so well in your other answers). I think you're still definitely on track for your A1.

meleanor

JustForClarity wrote: »

People generally get 18% or 19% out of the 20% if they do higher level and put effort into their fieldwork. Given that you're quite obviously a very good student then I'd imagine you got basically your full marks for the fieldwork.

One question isn't going to make the difference between grades (remember that an A1 is 90%-100% so there's quite a large room for error if you did so well in your other answers). I think you're still definitely on track for your A1.

Okay thanks so much that's a huge relief , I always post-mortem these things!
Really appreciate it

Jenny_ODwyer

meleanor wrote: »

BEAUTIFUL paper. Had my A1 in the bag. Until I was half way through a 30marker in the human section answering on the developing world...when I saw it said DEVELOPED. I'm absolutely devastated. I threw down half an answer on urban sprawl and traffic congestion. I want to do medicine and I needed that A!!!

Does anyone know if I can still get an A1 if my fieldwork goes well? Like I'm defo down at least 15 from that Q, could prob have lost marks elsewhere too.
How do people generally score in fieldwork?

My grinds teacher used to say remember you don't need an A1 in every section to get an A in geography so I say you'll be fine

Monsieur Folie

I worked out that if you did flawless fieldwork and got full marks, you could literally throw away 10 marks in every section of the exam and still scrape an A1 (you'd get 90% on the dot, I think). I doubt you lost 50 marks over the course of the exam, so don't worry.

meleanor

This is why I like Boards: everyone is just so cool, thanks guys!! not as worried!

John.Icy

You can lose 42 marks tand get an A1 in the paper.